


Is it something in the air?

by Annilie



Category: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26266978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annilie/pseuds/Annilie
Summary: Gun-captain Tom Pullings knew better than to believe Dr Maturin was all right but he also knew the doctor must be as bad as a patient as most of his patients would be as a doctor, if not worse.
Kudos: 6





	1. A Foul Mood

I don't claim any of the characters. Sorry for the imperfect English but it’s not my native tongue.

“Doctor? Are you feeling alright?” 1st Lieutenant Tom Pullings asked, already knowing the doctor did not. 

“Yes, Mr Pullings. I’m fine.”

The former gun-captain knew better than to believe that but he also knew the doctor was as bad as a patient as most of his patients would be as a doctor, if not worse.

“What can I do for you, Mr Pullings?” 

“The Captain sends me, Sir. You are wanted on deck. The youngsters got drunk last night and in some sort of fight one of them got severely wounded…”

Stephen Maturin groaned inwardly. He held up a hand to indicate for the Lieutenant he didn’t have to go on. “I’m on my way. Just give me a minute.”

“Sir.” The Lieutenant nodded and after a short hesitation he left the cabin.  
***  
“What takes him so long?” 

Captain Jack Aubrey was in a foul mood and the whole crew knew it. 

Jack didn’t care. In fact, he thought it good the crew was aware he was seething with rage. Such behavior such as last night should not pass without any notice. 

He could already hear Stephen’s voice, telling him he had warned him. 

And indeed, he had. Stephen had recommended him some time ago to remove all the booze off the ship. Jack had cut him short almost before he was finished. No booze would lead to anything from laziness to mutiny.

On the other hand, he and Stephen shouldn’t have to bother with such incidents as whatever exactly happened last night. However Jack was sure it had not been for a profusion of alcohol consumed. 

He looked at the young boy sprawled on the deck and around him in the direction of the door leading below deck out of which he expected to see the doctor appear any moment now. 

What took Stephen so long, anyway?

“Go get the doctor!” he called impatiently to no one in particular, after which he silently directed his mounting anger on the boy in his arms and anyone who had been into the mess that had caused the boy to fall in a coma for half the night. A short bustling around made clear the order was obeyed.

Not much later Stephen came up to the little group. With some force and an almost-snarl at Mr Pullings and Mr Marshall he made his way towards the unfortunate boy. It was clear from one look at the doctor's face that he was in no better mood than the Captain.  
Jack motioned for everyone to go on with their shores as to give the doctor space to do his work and no chance to snarl at anyone but him and the patient who surely deserved a good roasting. 

Ten minutes later the boy was in his hammock with his head bandaged and some laudanum in his system. Jack almost envied him since he himself had to handle an almost fuming doctor.  
Since it had been rapidly clear to Jack that the boy was going to be safe, once he woke up – even if he wondered whether a seemingly hurried and annoyed Stephen just wanted to do away with the whole thing – he had started to feel his famous good mood returning to him. 

However, when Stephen left the boy alone and returned to his own liar, Jack was sure he had passed on his crankiness to his friend.  
***  
(to be continued)


	2. When Alcohol Steps in...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crankiness spreads all over the ship, accompanied by alcohol. The latter causes numeral incidents one of which in turn causes Stephen's mood to sink even lower.

I don't claim any of the characters. Sorry for the imperfect English but it’s not my native tongue.

“Is it something in the air?”

Jack was the first one to put the question forward.

During the day crankiness had spread all over the ship. First it had been him, then Stephen – who still hadn’t reappeared out of his cabin yet since he had returned to it earlier – followed by several officers and subordinates who argued and yelled and at some point it had come to almost mutiny-like circumstances. 

Jack even had had to personally intervene into a physical fight not long before he reached Pullings, to whom he had been looking for in spite of the fact he had let the word spread for him.  
Once he found him, he had addressed the Lieutenant, making him turning away from some business with an angrily snarled “What?” When he had observed it was his Captain standing behind him, the man had begun to stammer an apology, which Jack had interrupted with a lifted hand and his question.  
There had fallen a silence around while more and more members of the crew became aware of the misunderstanding, which was broken by a short barked laugh from a young seaman who had already missed several promotions.  
Encouraged by this, some younger crew members grinned or chuckled as well.

Jack smiled. To hide it, he looked up as if the answer on his question would fall out of the air.

And maybe it would, the Captain thought. It had been a rainy day, which on itself had of course done nothing to improve the low mood. Every now and then some rain drops had fallen, promising and threatening more would follow and more did come. 

But no rain.  
***  
The evening started nicely enough with his violin and Stephen in the big cabin. 

Jack was plucking on the fiddle, desperate to keep his fingers and mind going on the waves of some piece he could relate too in his current still way too distorted mood. Stephen had friendly rejected his friend’s invitation to join him in the search.

The doctor and naturalist was studying a rather lousy drawing of a mew, trying to improve the draft and deciphering his scribbles which had grown almost illegible in some places by haste and rain. 

Jack was more than willing to leave the doctor to it.

There came an clearly urgent knock at the door. Before either Jack or Stephen could open their mouth to bid the visitor entrance the door was opened and a young boy and lost no moment in starting rambling.

Stephen recognised the boy. His name was Arthur. Jack had him added to the crew only some weeks ago after their last shore leave. Stephen also knew what brought the boy to the big cabin and more precisely, to him. 

It was the fifth time in three weeks.

He stopped the boy’s rambling by angrily closing his notebook, dropping it into his lap, and slapping his pencil down on top of it. As expected the boy shut up and cowered away a bit towards the door and almost stepped back out into the corridor before Stephen asked with a tone which did nothing to conceal his annoyance: “Who is it this time?” 

“Johnny, Sir.”

Stephen sighed deeply and nodded. “Again. Where? No, don’t answer that. Just bring him to his hammock.”

“The boys are doing their best, sir, but Johnny is rather big and…”

“And drunk like a loon, no doubt.”

Arthur looked at the ground, visibly embarrassed.  
Jack kept quiet during the exchange. He had been aware of course of the increasing drinking and he knew certain boundaries were trespassed on a regular base lately, especially after the shore leave, which had left the doctor very upset since the first great debacle including drunkenness in which Johnny had been involved as well. 

Stephen sighed, understanding that he would reach nothing by ventilating his disgust with the boy who had done nothing wrong and perhaps even hadn’t been involved in this latest drink battle at all.

“Don’t you worry. I’ll come over. Just spare me any climbing in the rigging.”

Jack could not suppress a surprised grin that spread on his face and for a moment only broadened when Stephen turned around, noticed his merriment and glared at him.

Arthur seemed relieved. His face had brightened during the brief exchange between the doctor and the Captain and he nodded vigouriously before he bowed to Stephen, straightened turned around and stopped halfway to turn back and repeat the courtesies towards his Captain as well. 

When the door had closed behind the boy, Jack smiled at the correctness of behavior of the newest member of his crew. Most of them were like that but nonetheless it proved the motivation and the honest ambition of the lads to be a part of the whole and to get forward. 

Jack could appreciate the attitude. Even if it had caused Arthur to forget his manners just now, bursting into the cabin where he mostly had no affairs at all, beginning to babble, all without waiting for an invitation to do so.

Jack turned to Stephen to comment on it, expecting the doctor to be almost out of the cabin already, losing no time to get to his patient. In stead Stephen sat still on his chair, staring at his cello as if his dear instrument had wronged him.  
Though, ironically, the only way the instrument could have done that was by making Stephen neglecting his duty towards his patients anyway. 

“Stephen? 

Stephen wiped his hand over his face, muttering: “Will those pieces of shit never listen?!”

Jack was surprised at this. He knew Stephen could be cranky with his patients, as most doctors were most of the time, he supposed. But to hear him speak about someone who was in need in such a way was new to Jack.

“Stephen?” he tried again to get the other's attention. 

This time he succeeded. Stephen looked up.  
To Jack he looked as if he had just woken up with a hangover himself. “What’s wrong?”

Stephen shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Stephen.”

Jack held Stephen when he made to follow by placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Stephen stalled but didn’t open up. Jack pushed a bit. “I know you for too long by now to be fooled by a simple ‘nothing’, Stephen. What did you mean, just now? Who should listen?”

Of course Jack had a pretty fine idea who Stephen had meant and what it was about, doctor-patient confidentiality and all, but he felt Stephen was upset by it. If he wanted to stop the crankiness aboard he could as well start with trying and lifting his friend’s mood. And the best way to do that was talking, he supposed. 

“All right. It’s at least the fifth time those boys drink like lunatics , drinking themselves almost to dead. I told them to quit it, they can’t stand so much alcohol but they just keep it up, not wanting to seem weak in the eyes of the rest. I become sick of it.”

Jack nodded inwardly. He had expected something like it to be troubling his friend. 

Stephen put his hand over Jack’s, which was still on his shoulder.

“As my shrink, can I trust you with some more?”

“Please, do.

“When I will go up there soon, my dearest wish will be to drown them in the beer before they can ever drink one more gulp of it.”

Jack laughed but stopped when he noticed the doctor’s serious demeanor. He knew his friend enough to know he was not to trifle with when he got very serious about something, and doctor’s went all serious about their patients, but somehow Stephen’s continuing crankiness about the whole thing disturbed him. 

He tried to enlighten the mood a bit. “One cannot expect the men to drink nothing but water all the time, right?”

“I’d have them drink seawater if need be.”

With that, Stephen took his bag and left, leaving Jack behind, feeling as if he himself had just got a good roasting. Shaking his head he followed his friend out and on deck, praying to God Stephen would not have to climb into the rigging.

(to be continued)


	3. Nervous

The next day came with a fantastic weather. It had rained and the men who had been at work during the night were happy to go under deck.  
The other part of the crew was more than happy to come up and enjoy the warmth and the absence of the continuing banging of raindrops on said deck and the cursing and lamenting of their working crew mates.

A big part of the latter of course fell to Stephen who handled it with great professionalism but Jack couldn't help but see through the small cracks that appeared in his demeanor.

The doctor was in dire need of some time off, and - Jack suspected while feeling deep warmth and affection in his heart - some new rare plants and animals to chase.

He couldn't for his life guess what had his friend so on edge, though.

Oke, a lot of the men were behaving terribly, giving Stephen much more work than there should be and ignoring his medical advises, but surely Stephen was used to that by now.  
Jack knew his friend put up with it, as with living at sea in general. Stephen was great in adapting, must be since his work as an intelligence agent required such an ability most gravely.

So what was it that got the doctor nervous?

Jack was not the only one who wondered.

Stephen himself asked asked the question when he had worked anyone out of the sickbay and sat down on one of the cots.

He felt worn out.

At the same time he felt he couldn't sit still for minutes on end and while he forced himself to do so and to calm down he felt his heartbeat promptly accelerated.  
Finally he stood up to avoid his heart to explode and started walking around on legs that seemed to protest the exercise.

He felt restless.

And that made him nervous.

He knew that. Everyone knew that. But why was he so restless?

Unfortunately, nobody knew the answer to that, not even Stephen himself and that was exactly what made the doctor restless.

His leg's protesting won out over his excessive energy and he sat down on the cot again, putting his head in his hands for a moment. It felt stuffed.

At that exact moment William Blakeley passed the sickbay. He peeked in without exactly meaning to and saw the doctor laying down on the cod. He knew better than to stop and stare - than to to spy - on the doctor but what he had seen nagged at him.  
That fact alone told him he should go to the Captain. If something was wrong with Doctor Maturin the Captain should never forgive him if he didn't. But if nothing was wrong both the Captain and the doctor might have his hide for meddling.

On deck had soon become clear the bad mood had been lifted again. There was laughter and William heard some bosun nearby call out at his mate who had started to climb up the main mast the Captain 'intented to bring his fiddle on deck.'  
William shook his head at that.  
The Captain only played in his cabin, more often than not when together with the doctor. It appeared to be a kind of ritual, something between the two of them.

The man in the mast started to sing some probably self-invented love song.  
An albatross who had sought a silent place to rest for a while on the upper yardarm fluttered and flew away, causing the audience to explode in laughter that was way to big to be caused by this alone.  
It was clear the merriment had gone on for some time and most of the men were at the state in which one laughed at everything.

William remembered the Captain asking "Is it something in the air?" the other day. If it was, today at least is was something good. 

Jack was of the same opinion. Whatever got his man so good humored, he savored it. The blue sky, the perfect temperature, warmed up by the slight sun against the still dark clouds displaying rainbows and the addicting merriment at which he too couldn't escape for long.

William was secretly pleased and relieved when Doctor Maturin appeared on deck at the change of the watch,smiling and looking well rested.  
It didn't take the Captain long at all to convince the doctor to join him that evening on deck with his cello.  
Even when two men had to be brought down by their mates after they had fallen down all of a sudden, the smile on the doctor's face didn't falter and the glittering in his eyes didn't fade a moment.

Later, Jack would curse himself for not noticing this himself.


	4. Something in a Bottle

Jack felt as if the men who stood before him had slapped him in the face, either the two bosuns or the doctor, whose complexion was, if anything, even more ill-looking than usual.

The two bosuns had cowered away from him as soon as they had entered the great cabin after Jack had summoned them. They had been unwilling to come; Jack had deduced that much from their body language. When they looked up at him and had caught sight of Stephen out of the corner of their eyes, they had, if anything, cowered away.  
If not for Jack’s presence, they would have bolted.

When Blakeley and Padeen had come to him earlier with the alarming message ‘the doctor had lost it’ Jack hadn’t been to surprised, expecting for them to mean Stephen had been a bit to harsh on a numerous drunk patient.

As it turned out, the doctor had been a bit more than ′a bit to harsh’ this time.  
He had slapped the two bosuns, or so they claimed.  
“He attacked us” one of them had claimed, throwing a dark glare at the doctor. That glare soon was cast to the ground however when Stephen returned it with a glare of his own and did a couple of steps in their direction.  
Pullings who had joined the men when he too had understood they were afraid, almost scared, to face their Captain, had moved to intervene but Stephen had waved him away, retreating.

Jack decided to let the fact that he should rebuke Stephen for giving commands in front of the Captain, while he was in fact put on the spot himself, pass for the moment.  
Pullings wouldn’t blame him for it.  
The man was a real treasure.

“So let me get this straight” he stated as calm and matter-of-factly-as he could manage. He addressed Stephen, to make clear he wouldn’t treat his friend any differently than the bosuns. “You slapped each of this men after you caught them with a bottle which you suspected contained laudanum.”

After a couple of moments Stephen answered with a steady voice: “Yes.”

Jack motioned for Pullings to show Stephen a bottle he held.

“Smell at it if you please. And tell me of it is laudanum.”

Pullings obeyed.

“Yes, Sir. It is, indeed, laudanum.”

Jack nodded, then continued, still addressing Stephen: “So you ‘catch’ these men with a bottle of laudanum and that upsets you so you go to them and slap them. Care to share with us why it upset you it made you to ‘jump on them as a tiger on a prey’, so it was you described it, Mr. Smith?” he addressed one of the bosuns.  
The young man was quick to answer in the affirmative.

“There’s no room for doubt the laudanum came out of the sickbay. I have a good enough memory to remember the patients I see and I would dare swear before God and any Court I did see none of these men recently. So it follows I didn’t prescribe the laudanum. Therefore they must have taken it themselves which is to define as theft.”

Which was true.

“I’m afraid It doesn’t warrant your conduct however, my dear doctor”, he stated. “The sickbay and the medical stocks are your responsibility and you were entirely in your right in confronting those thieves. You were not however in using physical violence.”

Stephen didn’t answer. His face remained hard and unreadable.

Jack felt his heart bleeding at what was to come and was happy he could postpone it by addressing the bosuns.

The two bosuns had been in the middle of the great merriment the previous day. One of them had been the poor lad that needed to be dragged down after passing out.

“Do you agree with the facts so far as I have laid them before you?”

The young men looked at each other a moment. Then Mr Smith nodded, his eyes remaining scanning the wooden floor, except for a quick glance at Jack.

“Is the assumption of the doctor that you took the laudanum and made uncontrolled and not prescribed use of it yesterday, correct?"

A nod and a soft "Yes, Captain."

"And when your mate - and I'd have answering for himself this time - passed out, had he taken laudanum?"

Jack looked at the silent bosun, accentuating his former request for the man to speak for himself.

The men did, even softer than his companion had spoken. Jack wondered exactly how great Stephens 'unhappiness' had been.  
Both youngsters had assured him the doctor had slapped them only once but Jack found himself in doubt, with an icy feeling in his chest, while he throw a look at Stephen who stood with his arms crossed before his chest, not moving as well as seemingly unmoved.  
The prospect of being flogged surely must have crossed the man's mind by now.  
It surely had crossed his own mind more than once by now and the pain of it was unbearable.  
Stephen however didn't seem to mind at all.  
Did he expect Jack to let him off the hook, after all?

It was the answer to that question however that had left Jack completely numb. He still didn't understand why Stephen had brought it up in the first place but in a fit of suicidal fatalism.

He had asked whether he could speak and Jack had given hem the word, taking it back after Stephen had barely said one sentence:

"I'm addicted to laudanum."

Jack saw the mouths of of the bosuns almost fall open and their eyes widening.  
His own mouth and eyes were not far behind, he knew.  
Stephen still was unmoved.  
Of course what Jack had taken for stupidity, he soon understood, was the despair of the addict who couldn't get what he so urgently needed.  
He felt great disgust suddenly for his friend, a doctor off all people, being an ordinary drug addict.

"Those two were stealing not to great a portion of laudanum, not for the first time. To keep my little problem under control I keep a private stock. Out of this I replaced what was stolen so as to have no trouble with the books or in case a great need arises. I'm afraid I cannot do it much longer since my own stock is almost up."

It was enough for Jack to understand what had gotten into his friend.

And enough to solve his own problem, his terror of having Stephen flogged or differently punished.  
It was only logical Stephen had gone through much, even before Jack knew him. Whatever had brought him down to the level of addiction, Jack was sure, it was an acceptable reason.

Stephen should be cured of it however. And torturing him again by a flogging didn't seem the right way to do that. If anything, more pain would drive Stephen to the use of laudanum in stead of dragging him away from it. Besides, the doctor clearly hadn't been himself when he caught the young thieves and confronted them, which, after all, had been his right.

Before things could proceed from there, however, thunder and lightning were heard and seen.  
Sworn to silence as long as the case wasn't finished, the bosuns en the doctor left the cabin.

Jack silently thanked God for the timely storm.  
While he went up, he wondered whether Stephen's moods lately had all been because of the laudanum.

Whether it was or not, he would ask a trustworthy man like Pullings to keep a close eye one the laudanum stock from now on while he himself kept a close eye on the doctor.

As for the two bosuns, they were cruelly taken care of by the see. As usual, huge, mean waves swept the deck and took four man with them, Mr Smith and his friend among them.


End file.
